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IEA's Birol Says Oil Demand Growth Steady

Global oil demand will rise by 1.2 million barrels per day in 2017, steady from 2016 global demand growth levels, despite gains in Chinese consumption, the chief of the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday in Singapore. Talking on the sidelines of Singapore's International Energy Week, the IEA's executive director Fatih Birol said that oil demand growth could weaken if prices kept rising, Reuters reported. International benchmark Brent crude oil futures have almost doubled from their January multi-year lows to over $50 per barrel. Birol said the slowdown in demand growth, compared with the 1.8 million bpd seen in 2015, would likely mean that a rebalancing of oil markets in terms of supply and demand would not happen until the second half of 2017. Birol also cast doubts on the effectiveness of a planned output cut by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to prop up prices, as this could trigger new production elsewhere, further undermining a re-balancing of oil markets.